Candi Halbert wanted a special gift for her mom's 100th birthday. Her quest led the family to an unexpected world record.

Candi's mom, Ira Halbert, is the eldest of 11 children, seven of whom are still living. Candi, a consultant who lives in New York City, grew up hearing her mom's stories about the siblings' childhood on a farm in Shuqualak, Mississippi.

Ira graduated from high school, then from a teachers' college in Mississippi. She taught for a while. In 1945, she came to live with her grandparents in East St. Louis to find a better-paying job. Four of her siblings eventually followed her to the area.

Today, the living Coleman siblings are Ira Halbert, 100; Marie Goodwin, 97; Thomas Coleman, 93; Marjorie Simms, 91; Clytice Dancy, 88; Yvonne Streeter, 81; and Reese Coleman, 76 -- although they go by the nicknames Cute, Honey, Bear, Heart, Kitty, Baby Sis and Partner. Brother Julius Coleman, nicknamed Cricket, died on June 19 at age 78.

Last year, Candi started wondering if her mom's long-lived family might qualify for an entry in Guinness World Records.

"This is probably a long shot, but I'll go ahead and apply," she thought. She gathered everyone's birth certificates, which took several months, and submitted the application last August. She received a notice in February that the claim had been accepted.

As of Aug. 26, 2022, when the record was established, the Coleman siblings (including Julius) had the highest combined age of eight living siblings: 701 years and 302 days. They'll keep the record until someone successfully challenges it.

Their longevity is even more remarkable given that life expectancy for Black Americans lags behind other races and ethnicities. Catherine O. Johnson, lead research scientist at the University of Washington, published research last year examining these disparities in detail.

"These differences are not innate," she said. "This is all because of the society we live in."

Missouri had the biggest disparity among the states from which the researchers collected data. In fact, Black men in Missouri have the lowest life expectancy for all Black men across the U.S., according to the research.

So, what factors -- beyond luck and good genes -- helped the Coleman siblings beat these odds? I recently met with some of them to find out.

Growing up under Jim Crow segregation and racism in Mississippi took a toll on the Coleman kids: They walked for miles on dusty gravel roads to get to their segregated schools, while the white children rode buses. Still, all 11 graduated from high school.

Their family grew all their own fruits and vegetables and raised chickens and cattle. They picked plums, blackberries and wild grapes, and grew squash, rhubarb, peas and corn. They fished and milked the cows. Everything they ate was homegrown and organic before "organic" was a thing.

Candi says her mom attributes her long life to "all of the sunshine and all of the hard work from all of those years." She also attributes it to her deep faith. Their father always told them to treat other people the way they wanted to be treated.

Marie Goodwin recalled her father's frequent advice: "Anytime you can help someone, help them. Don't get puffed up and all that sort of stuff."

Their parents took them to church, and the siblings have maintained strong bonds their entire lives. Ira continued to play piano for the Sunday school at her church until she was 94. The sisters in St. Louis, nicknamed "the Golden Girls," regularly visited Julius in his assisted living facility before his passing.

"They don't look like they are slowing down," Candi said about her aunts, who are in their 90s.

Recently, 164 members of the extended family gathered in St. Louis for a reunion. Three of the brothers were unable to attend because of health issues. The family members filled a ballroom, and Candi told the story of how the siblings set a world record.

She also read proclamations issued by the mayors of three cities where the families have lived -- St. Louis, East St. Louis and Shuqualak. The relatives clapped and cheered for their elders.

Despite their advanced ages, they were down to party. The sisters ended up staying until the very end.

Guadalupe Alexa Marcial of St. Charles, Missouri, knew she would be the wrong age for the moment: a 16-year-old celebrating her quinceanera, a coming-of-age milestone for 15-year-old Latinas.

But she still wanted her once-in-a-lifetime party.

"It's always been my dream to have a quinceanera," she said.

She was in seventh grade when the pandemic hit in 2020. Her school shut down after spring break, and Guadalupe stayed out the entire next year, too.

As the months at home dragged on, she asked her mom if she could still have the party, despite being a year older. Her mom agreed.

Guadalupe was hardly alone: Many girls whose quince anos fell during the pandemic had to delay their celebrations.

The mother and daughter spent two years planning. They reserved a church for the Mass and a community center for the celebration, hired a makeup artist and hairstylist, rented a party bus, arranged for catering, booked a photo booth and secured a DJ, photographer and videographer.

Guadalupe traveled to Chicago to find the perfect emerald-green gown, while the rest of her court -- composed of five chambelanes, or escorts -- got outfitted with tuxes at St. Louis' first dedicated quinceanera boutique, Bidi Bidi Bom Bom.

As the population of Hispanic residents has risen in the St. Louis metro area, there's been a boom in the services available to families planning this major life event. The parties have also become more elaborate and expensive, often rivaling -- or exceeding -- the cost of many weddings. A quinceanera dress alone can cost anywhere from $500 to $2,000, and the entire party often runs from $15,000 to $30,000.

Some families share the expense of the party with several padrinos and madrinas, or godparents, each of whom sponsors a different element of the event. A close relative might pay for the catering or the cake, for instance, while a family friend might pay for the limo or photography.

Guadalupe's big day finally arrived, beginning with a Mass in Spanish and English. Shortly after noon, she and about 20 of her friends boarded their party bus and headed to St. Louis' historic Main Street for a photo shoot. Next stop: Starbucks.

"A lot of people were staring," she said. Several complimented her dress and asked if there was a wedding.

Around 4:30, she made a grand entrance at her party while mariachis serenaded her with the traditional birthday song. The musicians continued playing while 300 guests dined on chicken with mole verde, rice and beans.

After dinner, a series of traditional dances and ceremonies began. In one, the shadow of a toddler appeared against a curtain backdrop and was then replaced in turn with a 7-year-old, an 11-year-old and finally a 13-year-old, symbolizing a little girl growing up.

Guadalupe's father lives out of town and could not attend the event, so the dancing began with a mother-daughter waltz instead. The guest of honor missed her father, and the emotions of the day were getting to her.

She started to cry. Her mother's friend pulled her into the kitchen.

"Everything is going to be OK," she said. "He's going to call you tomorrow. You should enjoy your day."

After drying her tears and fixing her makeup, Guadalupe joined her escorts for their dance.

Traditional rituals followed -- her godmother placing a crown on her head and her grandmother changing her tennis shoes to glittery gold heels. She performed a dance with two younger girls, who then presented her with her last doll.

A modern trend in quinceaneras is for the honoree and her court to perform a surprise dance number. So at the end of the night, Guadalupe swapped her dress for black bootcut jeans and a green shirt, and her chambelanes ditched their tuxes for jeans, boots and sombreros. They did a mix of different Latin dances, to the delight of the guests.

The day turned out to be just as memorable as Guadalupe had imagined. And well worth waiting for.

It took a little over a year for Elon Musk to prove me dead wrong.

In April of 2022, the Twitter board accepted Musk's $44 billion offer to acquire the company. My colleague, columnist Tony Messenger, and I posted a video a few weeks later discussing what this might mean for the future of the site.

We lamented how much time we'd spent on the platform. I'd been tweeting for 15 years at that point. What started as a useful tool became a daily habit. The site attracted so many journalists because it could be used as a curated news feed and start conversations with people around the world.

And it was more than a source of news or entertainment. Twitter also became a pivotal force in movements for social justice and freedom: helping mobilize protests in Iran, fueling the Arab Spring, giving rise to the #MeToo revelations and galvanizing millions after the killings of George Floyd and Michael Brown.

It was a place to learn from and engage with others and share our own thoughts on the biggest events and debates –- all in real time.

When Musk took over, my colleague and I were concerned that he might ruin it. Messenger said he feared that the people who used social media to attack and harass others would be given free rein to do so under the new ownership.

"But ultimately, (Musk's) a businessman, and I don't think he's going to do something that destroys the platform," he said.

I agreed.

"If he forces Twitter to loosen its rules against hate speech online, then he will see people leave, and less engagement, which translates to a loss in money," I said. We decided to wait and see what happened.

So, here's what happened: Since Musk took over, hate speech and misinformation spiked, traffic plunged, advertisers fled and competitors have proliferated. Twitter still has around 300 million users on the site, but the bulk of its content is created by "power users." Among U.S. adults who use the site, 20% produce 98% of that subgroup's tweets, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center. These power users' average number of tweets per month declined by around 25% following the acquisition by Musk, the report found.

Matthew Prince, CEO of internet services company Cloudflare, posted a chart this week (on Twitter, ironically enough) showing that the platform has been on the decline since the start of this year.

The data reflect my own experiences. The comments on Twitter have gotten nastier. There is less reach and engagement for those of us who refuse to pay the subscription fee. Fewer people see what you're sharing. It's far less useful and interesting than before.

It made me think about why I was so wrong about Musk. I had bought into the meritocracy myth so prevalent in American society. We are biased toward wildly wealthy businessmen, assuming that in order to amass billions of dollars, a person must possess an exceptional level of intelligence or business savvy. Such a rare achievement must be a result of some kind of genius.

Well, this week Musk challenged his business rival Mark Zuckerberg to a literal penis-measuring contest.

The genius just leaps off the screen when you read Musk's tweets: He promotes conspiracy theories and hurls childish insults at his critics. The silver lining in Musk's destruction of Twitter through a relentless series of bad decisions has been seeing his unfiltered thoughts online. He's laid to rest the notion that massive wealth translates to great leadership or wisdom.

Listening to my words from a year ago made me realize how ingrained these assumptions are.

There's a raft of reports about the negative impact on young people who are heavy users of social media. But clearly, young people are not alone in spending too much time online. Being ensconced in an online bubble can warp anyone's thinking -- about themselves, others and the world around them.

The Musk fiasco has me appreciating the value of posting less on social media.

But I'm also among the 100 million users who joined Zuckerberg's rival site, Threads, in the first five days since it launched. Part of me hopes that it might eventually feel like the old Twitter.

On the other hand, it's another billionaire's brainchild.